Going down to the newsstand on any given Sunday is a preamble. The slowness of the elevator doesn't bother you, and it's easy to glimpse the calm. Traffic yields to three or four punctual taxis and a bicycle or two. The walk is wide, and as you pick up the newspaper from the pile, the scent of the ink adorns you from within. You hand the exact amount to the newsstand owner, and there's time for a kind gesture. Unlike weekdays, when the newsstand becomes a transit station as you head to the subway or walk to the office, going down on Sunday is like coming home and preparing to enjoy the newspaper in the armchair.
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For more than a century, the newsstand has been associated with the written press. But it hasn't always been this way. The philologist Joan Coromines illustrated the origin of the word. Kiosk comes from Turkish (kyöšk) and means a luxury, recreation, or summer space. Let's imagine, then, a small enclosure integrated into a garden. With columns. Open, like a square whose function is public projection. For example, to host an outdoor music concert.
The first newsstands in Barcelona were commissioned to the architect Garriga i Roca after an initial pilot test. The purpose of the commission was to establish a certain homogeneity in their form, given that they were planned to be distributed throughout the city. The first one was installed on the Rambla in 1877. It was made of wood and iron and, apparently, was not oriented towards the press but towards beverages. Ten years later, coinciding with the Universal Exhibition, these points of sale proliferated, where all kinds of products except press could be found. The press was not there because, at that time, distribution was limited to home delivery. Moreover, one of the most important competitive factors was the morning punctuality of delivery.
It wasn't until El Noticiero Universal, a newspaper newly arrived in Barcelona, published an afternoon edition and required the kiosk concept for distribution. Fresh news that broke the routine of the usual print run. Suddenly four opened, on the Rambla, imitating the architecture of the Parisian model of the time. That from then on the kiosk was destined for the written press was a success that has lasted more than a century. One hundred years, however, not without dark periods. Periods in which the kiosk has also been an active part as a venue for gatherings, bets, domestic entanglements, and clandestine meetings.
The first kiosk was installed on the Rambla in 1877. It was made of wood and iron and, apparently, it had not been oriented towards the press but towards drinks.The kiosk of the commissariat of political propaganda
One of the relevant historical moments, and at the same time, most unknown, came from the hand of the Political Propaganda Commissariat of the Republican Generalitat, headed by the brilliant Jaume Miravitlles. Miravitlles commissioned an avant-garde kiosk model with GATCPAC aesthetics to distribute the institution's own products in it. The acronym GATCPAC refers to an architectural movement that emerged in the 1930s. Its purpose was to modernize the architectural context in accordance with the avant-garde fashion in Europe at the time. In these kiosks promoted by Miravitlles, one could acquire magazines like Nova Ibèria or Moments, books published by the Commissariat, posters, magazines, and propaganda objects such as the popular Generalitat insignia with the motto: Per Catalunya.
But the most successful object among the population was the figure of El més petit de tots, a work by designer Miguel Paredes. What was baptized as La Mascota de la Revolució achieved such notoriety that around three hundred thousand copies were sold (not counting the counterfeits that soon appeared). This figure, however, responded to a plan to discern the idiosyncrasy of republicanism among the people of Barcelona. Unlike the behavior analysis tools we are subjected to today, in the mid-1930s there wasn't even a telephone to conduct, for example, opinion polls. In this way, the figure of El més petit de tots incorporated a flag that responded to four variants: the tricolor flag of the Spanish republic, the red and black colors of anarchism, the communist hammer and sickle, and the Catalan flag with the four bars. The result was that the figure with the four-bar flag prevailed far ahead of the others, especially the tricolor, which was the least sold. According to Miravitlles himself, these figures represented "a very approximate manifestation of the spirit of the people of Catalonia during the first months of the Civil War."
The digital era and the written press
The digital era twisted the sales trend that the written press had been accumulating for decades. In the last twenty years, newsstands, conveniently distributed throughout Barcelona's neighborhoods, have had to adapt to the online revolution which, on the one hand, has opened wide access to information, providing immediacy and globality. And, on the other, it has guillotined the distribution of paper press, both paid and free models. According to data from the Office of Justification of Circulation (OJD), the daily distribution of the free newspaper that remains in Barcelona has gone from one million copies nationwide to less than three hundred thousand in a decade (2008 to 2018). And three of the four major paid mastheads are below one hundred thousand copies sold, when in 2008 daily sales moved between two and three hundred thousand.
This fact has led newsstands to increasingly diversify their offerings, to the point of becoming points of sale with an extensive variety of products of unsuspected necessity. However, adaptation has been the usual dynamic of newsstands since their appearance in the mid-19th century. But the turning point must be placed in the 2008 crisis. Since then, on any given Sunday, newsstands have gone from selling around a thousand copies of a reference masthead to selling a few dozens. As a consequence, more than 35% of establishments have permanently closed. And the closure of a newsstand is more than a lowered shutter. It directly affects daily life, complicity, a meeting point for coexistence and conversation. It is a wound to the life of the neighborhood.
The new generation of newsstands
Even so, once again, the Barcelona dynamic adapts to circumstances and a new concept of newsstand, of New York inspiration, is replacing the disappeared establishments. News & Coffee and Good News are two companies that have taken the initiative to recover their essence. Now, in addition to the daily press and the exquisite range of specialized publications, the option of a good coffee, a natural juice or a healthy and celiac-friendly snack is added.
The News & Coffee kiosk is located on Paseo de Sant Joan. Good News, on the other hand, has opted for Diagonal and, soon, plans to open a second establishment in Plaça Sarrià. One of its five co-founders, Alejandro Catasús, explains it to us: the idea for the new concept emerged during the March lockdown when most establishments, with the exception of kiosks and food stores, were forced to close. The five friends met at the foot of an equidistant kiosk with the excuse of meeting up. While conversing, the importance of these establishments and the symbolism they represent for the neighborhood was revealed to them. They immediately saw an opportunity; that of reorienting the traditional concept to a younger target, while maintaining the usual public. The reception among neighbors, Alejandro affirms, has been exceptional. They are currently in talks with the owners of licenses for other closed kiosks, or those who plan to retire soon, in order to study opening more points in the city. Hand in hand with these initiatives, kiosks will continue to meticulously guard life in word format. At night, as always, like tin niches in the middle of the city. By day, renewed, like Manhattan flowers open to the five senses.